The Federal Trade Commission wants to more tightly regulate what bloggers and website owners say on their sites about products and services. They even want to regulate how we link to other websites. Is this consumer protection or over-the-top government intervention where little is needed?
Watchmen: I am Never Going to the Movies Again
"back from seeing Watchmen... if i had to describe it in one word... boring... if i had to describe it in two words....&$^%ING BORING."
12 Rules for the Comic Book Industry
I have some real problems with the state of the comic book industry right now. If it were up to me, I would force these rules upon every creator, publisher, shop and reader, Thanos-style.
Sad Little Numbers: Wikipedia is a Black Hole From Which I Cannot Escape
Many are the days and nights when I have looked at a clock after using Wikipedia and realized that multiple hours have passed. Wikipedia is the greatest time suck ever devised by man.
Lost in Translation -or- Japanese Cartoons Are Weird, Man
I could write about the show itself, the characters or the maybe the DVD presentation. No. I'm going to focus on the lyrics of the theme songs, as translated into English.
Two GNR-related posts in one week? Let me see… yeah, there’s my picture… there’s my logo… this is definitely my website. Huh. Whaddayaknow?
My initial reaction to hearing the new Guns N’ Roses tracks was a definitive “meh”. I wasn’t impressed, and my expectations were close to zero. I heard about it, coincidentally, on the night that my cousin’s GNR cover band was performing on Letterman. I gave Chinese Democracy a spin on MySpace, where the entire album is posted for your pirating – I mean, listening – pleasure.
Axl’s voice has matured, and while Geddy Lee of Rush, for example, has aged gracefully, Axl just sounds old. It’s been over twenty years since the classic Appetite For Destruction, and this record makes that point in a fairly negative way. There will certainly be a significant number of die-hards that defend the album with fanboy intensity. Those that aren’t fanboys will likely give the album a bland reception. Over the next few days and weeks, I fully expect there to be a chorus of “it took them a decade to make this?”
Last week I got a message from my mother, saying that she had talked to my Aunt Pam. The big news was that my cousin, Drew, was going to be on the Late Show with David Letterman with his band! Now, Drew is in a project called Takka Takka, and my first thought – since I wasn’t specifically told – was that Takka Takka was going to be performing. Turns out… not so much. Shortly after I got the first message, I was told that he’d be on with Mr. Brownstone, the Guns N’ Roses cover band that he’s been involved with for many years. I confess, I was a little disappointed – I’m a big fan of Takka Takka. Hopefully, with the release of the new album, Migration, and their inclusion on the soundtrack of the Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist movie, Takka Takka will have a shot to play Letterman in the near future!
Living in the Southwest as I do, and Drew living up in the Northeast as he does, I’d never seen him perform in Mr. Brownstone. Here’s the clip, via YouTube – my cousin (who wasn’t even allowed to listen to Guns N’ Roses when we were growing up) is the shirtless, leather-panted bass player:
Hopefully the clip won’t get yanked off of YouTube! The guys clearly had a great time on the show, and okay, it was a little over the top, but wasn’t Guns N’ Roses themselves always a little over the top? Great job, guys!
I’m watching Nick Jr. with my three year old daughter right now, and I have a question. Since when is it okay for the between-show commercials on Nick Jr. to market hair care products on the premise that they will make your hair “sexy”? Now, I’m no prude. I don’t think that children of all ages need to be shielded from every marginally grown-up word or concept until they hit 18 years old. I think that, for the most part, people who raise the “WE NEED TO PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!!!!” battle cry are using kids as an excuse to censor ideas and language that they simply don’t like.
Nobody had to explain to a 5-year-old what Bill Clinton did with Monica, and anyone that says they did is either lying or they didn’t realize that 5-year-olds are really easy to distract with a shiny object. I’m old-school; I firmly believe in simply telling a kid that some things are for grown-ups and some things are for kids and leaving it at that. It worked for me when I was a kid, and it’s working great with my own daughter.
I do think that the commercials need to match the programs, though. When I’m watching shows on the Food Network, I fully expect the commercials to be food-related. When I’m watching The Shield, I expect the commercials to be aimed at adults. I don’t want to see a commercial for Barbie dolls during The Sopranos, it’s inappropriate.
It’s also inappropriate to run a commercial for Pantene hair care products between Dora the Explorer and Diego featuring a beautiful woman in a short black dress who says of her hair, “I think volume is sexy”. There’s a time and a place for everything, and I think that if they wouldn’t use a word or concept in the show, they shouldn’t use it in the commercials attached to the show. If Dora ever turns to Boots and says “you know, Boots, I think when my hair is up like this, it’s really sexy”, then I’ll have no problem with Nick Jr. running the Pantene ad.
1. For about a month or so leading up to the election, I had the graphic you see to the left in the sidebar of this site. Of course, I’m not so foolish as to believe that the tens of visitors I get on a daily basis would be influenced by it enough to change a McCain vote to an Obama vote. I had it there because I felt good about having it there. I can sum up the reasons why Barack Obama won last night pretty easily. One of them is that people like me, people that vote Democrat regularly, people that voted for Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004, felt differently about Obama than we felt about both Gore and Kerry. We voted for Gore and Kerry, but we were not inspired by them. They did not represent generational change. They did not speak to us the same way that Obama does. I was proud to vote for Gore and Kerry. I was excited to vote for Obama. This is the first time in my life that I have gone beyond just voting and actually contributed financially to a campaign. My $25 probably didn’t pay for much more than a few streamers at the convention, but I was happy to provide what I could.
I’ve been a comic book collector for over twenty years and I love a well-done comic book movie – but it’s rare that I buy new movies on DVD these days. I don’t have as much time for movie watching, so it’s becoming more economical for me to rent. I have watched Star Wars enough times that it costs me pennies per viewing, but I’d rather spend $4.00 at Blockbuster to watch a movie like The Incredible Hulk than spend $20 to own it, knowing that I’ll probably only watch it once or twice.
I watched The Incredible Hulk last night, and came to a few conclusions. First, it’s not as good as Iron Man. Second, I love how they drop hints throughout the script about what’s coming down the road – Captain America, the Avengers, and more. Third, Tim Roth is a tiny, tiny man. I mean, that dude is small. He’s only about 5′6″ or 5′7″ and has a thin frame that makes him look like a maniacal Frodo next to Ed Norton (at 6′) and William Hurt (nearly 6′2″). Small guy, great actor.
The movie was good, overall. Not great, but a hell of a lot better than Ang Lee’s 2003 Hulk movie, which was just… ugh. This one’s not for the young kids; it definitely earns the PG-13 rating for violence.
Depending on how Marvel handles the upcoming movie tie-ins (Iron Man 2, Captain America, Thor and Avengers), I may end up buying this one on DVD – or Blu-Ray, if I upgrade in the next two years. I mean, I own Daredevil and Elektra… and The Incredible Hulk smashes both of them to bits (that should go without saying, but still).
They’re always finding new ways to get me, I’ll tellin’ ya. Back in September, I wrote a piece called Is Star Wars Over? in which I steadfastly maintained that I would no longer buy any prequel-era Star Wars material. I went to the bookstore recently and successfully avoided buying Order 66 and Coruscant Nights II. The new novel, Millennium Falcon, went home with me though, because it’s a story that takes place two years after the Legacy of the Force series – forty-three years after the original Star Wars trilogy.
Or does it?
See, this is how they get me. The book tells the story of Han Solo’s legendary ship and it includes prequel-era history (the book spans more than 60 years). Apparently, in the way that everything that ever happened to anyone in the Star Wars universe is somehow tied to the Skywalker and Solo families, the Falcon had a role in Episode III, during the Battle of Coruscant.
I was less than thrilled with the previous attempts to tie the prequel era to later books. The Rogue Planet novel set up events for the New Jedi Order series, which was completely unnecessary. I was openly disdainful of the Outbound Flight novel’s story, which I thought was fantastic until Kenobi and Skywalker showed up.
Open message to LucasArts or LucasBooks or whatever LucasThing is making these decisions: you don’t have to tie every single event in the universe to the Skywalkers or the Solos. It’s a big galaxy, after all. You don’t need to stick Anakin Skywalker into every prequel-era story and you don’t need to squeeze the Falcon into the prequel movies just to try to sell a book. It comes across as forced and unrealistic. I know, I know, realism and Star Wars don’t exactly mix – but you know what I mean.
They’re always finding new ways to get me, I’ll tellin’ ya. Back in September, I wrote a piece called 